1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a photographic printing system for printing photographic image data obtained by digital cameras or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been known a digital photographic service system carrying out various digital photographic services related to photographs, such as storing photograph images obtained by users in image servers after digitization thereof, providing the images to the users by recording the images in CD-R's, and receiving orders for additional prints. In such a system, a user installs dedicated viewer software for reproducing an image recorded in a CD-R in his/her personal computer, and reproduces the image. The user generates order information describing the content of an order by using an ordering function of the viewer software in the case of ordering additional prints. The user brings the order information and the CD-R to a DPE store and the DPE store provides the order information and the CD-R to a laboratory. In this manner, a photograph image that has been ordered is generated.
As one form of such digital photographic service systems, a network photographic service system has been proposed. In a network photographic service system, digital images of users are stored (registered) in a system of a service provider and a printing order or the like is received via a network such as the Internet.
In such a network photographic service system, in order to provide digital photographic services to users, a server computer having a scanner, a printer, and a large-capacity disc (hereinafter called an image server) is installed in a wholesale laboratory and photographs obtained by users are stored in the image server. By enabling the users to access the image server via a network, various kinds of services such as ordering an additional print, attaching a photograph image to an e-mail message, and download of photographic image data are provided. In such a service, a user accesses the image server by using predetermined application software installed in his/her personal computer and orders an additional print or the like. Meanwhile, in the laboratory, photographic processing such as generation of an additional print, a picture postcard, an album, and a composite image, and trimming is carried out on image data based on order information from the user. Data after the processing are transferred to the user or an e-mail message notifying completion of the processing is sent to the user, for example.
The “order information” herein referred to is information such as a processing number indicating the content of a service (such as generation of an additional print or a postcard), an image number specifying a photograph, a print size, the quantity of prints, a quality of printing paper (such as glossy or non-glossy), the thickness of the paper, the content of photographic processing, and trimming specification, for example.
Meanwhile, in APS (Advanced Photo System), photographing information such as the date of photographing is magnetically recorded on a film upon photographing and the magnetically recorded photographing information is added to digital image data as tag information thereof when the film is read to obtain the image data. In the case of a digital camera, when image data obtained by photographing are recorded in a memory thereof, photographing information is added to the image data. The photographing information added to the image data in the above manner is printed on the back of photographic prints or the like, and used for managing or ordering the prints. For printing such photographing information on photographic prints, a method of printing photographing information by specifying a printing format such as a position and a font has also been proposed (Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 10(1998)-191021).
However, in the method described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 10(1998)-191021, only photographing information added to image data at the time of photographing is printed and characters desired by a user are not printed in this method.